Control Panel

Archive for InWorldz

This is a long post. For the specific instructions on requesting your own per-user exportable archive for a given region, skip ahead to the Instructions section below.

Background

You may have read my previous post of my Personal Changes going forward, and effective departure from virtual worlds. This is unrelated to the closure of either InWorldz or Islandz, but rather due to the combination of several factors.

Before I go, I’m trying to take care of former InWorldz users to the best of my ability. This is now specifically exportable per-user OAR archives of the regions taken at the time of the InWorldz shutdown back in July.

It was not possible to save all of the grids assets in the short time available, and without the assets inventories were of no value (they are really just directories of links to assets). However, we could save any objects rezzed in regions, including the assets referenced by those objects, so we let as many people know as possible to rez whatever they could in the few days available, and began saving OAR files of the regions.

These OAR files include many objects, items and assets protected by permissions and even full-perm items that were not licensed for export to, or use on, other grids. That said, there were many objects that users created themselves, or in small teams, and they held the Intellectual Property (IP) rights (copyright) on those items. Thus, these can be exported for their use.

InWorldz received very clear instructions from creators to not provide their creations in these per-user exportable OAR files. However, there wasn’t time to do thousands of individual archive files for each user who had content on a region, nor is it even known who would be interested in these. So a single OAR backup was done, with all referenced assets, for each region running on the grid.

A lot (weeks) of work was done coding load-time filtering to allow creator wishes to be respected and yet restore content from InWorldz, with a specific opt-in requirement for each creator (if desired). Also, because some asset references (such as textures or sounds on prims) do not have any known creator information, a full grid-wide scan of all Contents items in all prims in all regions was also performed, to try to identify the creators of each of these assets and allow them to be identified as being created by the creator of the prim, or by a user who had chosen to opt-in. In spite of this, the creators of many of the textures on prims could not be identified, and a substitute plywood texture was used. This was probably one of the larger contributing factors to Islandz not reaching the critical size needed to survive January.

Soon, with a bit more coding, that technology will be used to try to maximize the content saved in exportable OAR files. This is important to try to provide as much user content as possible while still respecting the wishes of other creators, and protecting their content from permissions-free regions elsewhere.

Islandz is Dead — Long Live InWorldz (OARs)

Without the huge workload of attempting to continue with Islandz, focus returned to the per-user exportable OAR archives from InWorldz. Since none of this content was being automatically uploaded by administrators on a new grid, but rather provided to the owners of the content for their use according to whatever license agreements they have with creators, the decision was made that textures on prims could be included in the filtered exportable OARs if the creator could not be identified. This is relatively safe because in order for the owner of a prim to place the texture, the creator of the texture would have already provided a full-perm (exportable) copy of the texture with the trust of the new user, and with or without an agreement for use.

Users who built their own objects and then texture them would have also been the original uploader of that texture in many cases, and filtering these would needlessly harm the continued use of these creations by the creator of the prims. Also, since the creator was already trusting the user to respect their license wishes, those textures can be included in an export of prims created by that second user. This means the InWorldz exportable OARs will be considerably more complete (much less plywood) than the objects that could be automatically restored by the grid administrators on the new of Islandz. However, they will still be filtered based on the recipient user’s status as owner and creator of each prim in an object, and for the creators of the Contents within each prim.

Let me try to make this point clear: again, while Islandz needed strict enforcement of explicit opt-in, exportable OARs to users can be slightly different in that, in order to put a texture on a prim, the creator had to give a copy of the texture to the new prim creator. That second user could have saved the texture outside the grid, the creator is trusting the second user to respect their license. If the export OAR filter assumes that any texture with an unknown creator cannot go out, then InWorldz is taking control of that agreement with the creator and assuming the worst, also enforcing something that the actual texture creator did not want enforced on the grid. Further, it also prevents people from keeping their own textures on their prims. It is something no other export does and filtering by creator and owner at maximum Contents depth is already very good enforcement (and likely better than ever done before anywhere else including SL). Basically, there was already an agreement in place with the texture creator and it will be respected and not overridden by the grid. It’s very subtle I know, but it’s different when you are automatically uploading content to a new grid on behalf of a user, rather than letting them choose to do so manually.

You can forget about Islandz opt-in completely; that is not relevant to the OAR filtering being done now. That was only important when regions were intended to be restored on Islandz. A “Part 2” of the original plan was to produce OAR files from InWorldz for export to other grids. That is pretty much the only part of the plan going forward. Since there will be no Islandz, these OARs are those exported versions from InWorldz, not related to Islandz in any way. They were captured back in July and it has always been said that they will be your stuff only, because they are leaving the grid.

*** Instructions for OAR Exports ***

This is not a small undertaking, and is being done for free in my spare time as part of my commitment to InWorldz users to do what I can to help them recover as much content as possible, while also trying to respect the copyright / IP of creators. If you do not follow these instructions as closely as possible, or provide false information, it is possible that you may not receive an OAR file.

You will need to provide:1. list of regions where you had content, 2. your avatar name, and 3. any other avatars from whom you have specifically obtained permission to take their content to another grid.

Note that point 3 above is unrelated to Islandz opt-in. In fact, this entire process is unrelated to Islandz in any way. You will only be receiving the content for the InWorldz avatars in that list, but you will receive their objects as well as your own. Thus this is not something for creators to give permission to but rather for teams and partners to allow a combined archive of major projects, such as the Memory Alpha region for Star Trek role play, or projects like The Land of Lar, or for romantic partners to receive a combined region with their combined creations.

Do not specify an avatar in the list in point 3 unless you have contacted them about this and have explicit permission. That avatar will need to email the addresses below to confirm that they wish to have their objects and creations on that region included in the OAR file you will receive.

If you are a content creator of any kind and you want your content (including objects owned by you) to be included in someone else’s export OAR archive, send an email to the email addressed below indicating:1. You give your permission to have the content in a specific region or list of regions given to another user.2. The name of the recipient avatar to whom you are allowing to have your content from that region.3. Whether you want things included that you have created but they own, or whether it should also include objects where you are the owner.

These OARs won’t be going to Islandz so they won’t be as heavily filtered (less plywood) but you need to provide the list of avatars who have agreed to let you take content to new grids. It is probably very short, usually members of a team, a partner, and/or a list of alts you may have built things with. It’s the best we can do to try to get your content from those regions in July to users.

Send the info above an email to: elenia.llewellyn AT gmail.com and to jim AT gridmail.org and I’ll do my best to get an exportable OAR posted and provide a download link to the avatar requesting.

I’m sorry if this is confusing (it was even more confusing to try to come up with a workable plan here)! I’m doing my best. I hope it helps some InWorldz residents at least. I don’t really have date of completion for the remaining coding, however I hope to complete it in the next week or so get started on OAR files right away after that.

As you may remember, last July I announced my decision to leave virtual worlds. You may have missed this due to that announcement being contained in several threads being cleaned up by Elenia, including my replies to the earlier horrible messages of hate. My decision was due to several reasons. However, I was not aware that I would hear only a week later that InWorldz servers would be shut down. But when that happened, I felt an obligation to both Elenia and to the people of InWorldz to do whatever I could to help capture as much content as possible, and help get that to the content owners.

Later, after the community contributed generously and offered such incredible support for restarting a grid on new servers, I was again drawn in to continuing to do what I could to help.

And that was to do a lot. A lot of the old procedures and files were lost, because we were so focused on trying to save the contents of about a thousand user regions. The templates we used to allocate new regions, the “places” map website, the CloudIDE, DreamShare and InShape servers, asset servers, inventory servers, and setup and configuration for the central grid services and all regions, and a lot more. We saved as much of the region content as possible, but as I’ve said before, the house was on fire and we only had time to grab a few things and get out before it was all gone.

So almost everything needed to be rebuilt, on new and different servers, new asset and database servers, and new procedures and code. And my assistance and recommendations to Elenia for product offerings on AWS, new code (including the “app” website) and opt-in policies and supporting code for ensuring strict protections for creators and their creations.

It’s been a very demanding unpaid second full-time job, on top of my very demanding regular day job. Not so much due to residents’ demands, but due to my personal desire to ensure that the work is done as fully and professionally as possible, given limited time and resources, but still a solid and expansible foundation for Elenia to use going forward.

It’s been very hard on me physically. I’m 56 years old and I can’t stay up until 3am or later every night trying to get things done, and then make it into my day job before 9am where I then lead a team working (for the Department of National Defense on a Canadian Navy base) developing server/client software that manages all networking and communications on Navy ships. If you think InWorldz or Islandz is a high-pressure, high-demand working environment, you should try a meeting with Navy commanders and NATO representatives. It should be obvious that this work duality is something I could only keep up for a limited time.

Today, I am sick at home, headaches and other problems. A lot of the things that keep me healthy have been shelved temporarily for a productivity burst that has now lasted six months.

To keep doing this also takes an emotional foundation which has been rocked repeatedly since the summer. First with the unspecified accusations from Mike, Misty and Benski that I am Very Bad for the grid, and that they won’t be part of a world were I have a role. This led to my decision in July (which has been delayed but at no time did I consider reversing that decision). There have also been a couple of somewhat toxic members of the community who try to achieve personal goals through attempts at bullying, shaming and intimidation of other residents. We are all supposed to be adults here and Elenia is trying to keep drama to a minimum and does not wish to apply discipline in these specific cases, even temporary timeouts, so that aggression takes its toll on a few targets including me. It adds to the emotional burden and adds to the questioning of life goals and how this aids my attempts to reach them. (I only have one, and that is to be happy, and this kind of completely needless conflict does not contribute to that goal and has led to me questioning why I am still here.)

I will never work in a more challenging job, be it paid or unpaid (and for the record I haven’t received a penny since May or June, instead contributing to the GoFundMe and occasionally paying for some Islandz services myself) nor will I, in spite of this effort and workload and recent accomplishments, need to face accusations that I am harming the grid or virtual worlds. I don’t need to accept this; folks, if you can only criticize when someone is volunteering to help you resolve a problem, you should take a step back to look at your own sense of entitlement.

On Monday, my 91 year old mother is having eye surgery on her only good eye. She is already today legally blind but still capable of living mostly independently. She has no short term memory, and combined with blindness, it means notes and signs to jog her memory are less than ineffective. I will be staying with her Sunday night to get her to surgery early in the morning, and all day Monday and then overnight again. My sister will take over Tuesday, and my brother has taken Wednesday off to drive from New Brunswick to take care of her that day. We will take turns, supplemented by a personal care worker when we need a break. The recovery could take 3 weeks or more, and at her age likely to be problematic in her proper care. She may need a second surgery after a few weeks. There are many care-related calls and probably moving to deal with there. So on top of everything else, I have that to take care of too.

I have been scrambling to get complex creator-filtered OAR file loading completed as quickly as humanly possible, before the surgery. That OAR work is by far the most thorough attempt to recover content ever, while also being the most thorough protection of creator content and intellectual property (copyright) protection ever.

So I really have no idea why the Creator’s Guild folks wouldn’t be thrilled with the protections implemented; it is miles beyond anything any other grid has provided, including Second Life. Except perhaps that their demands to only allow restores that don’t include any of their assets have delayed our ability to deliver the OARs, and also rendered the OARs nearly worthless in some cases. They may be angry that they will be getting exactly what they asked for, opt-in only for all assets leaving InWorldz (which includes loading on Islandz). Or perhaps just convinced by others that something was wrong, that we wouldn’t protect them, themselves victims of the propaganda campaign of character assassinations.

The negativity towards me personally may also be because Tranq abandoned InWorldz and didn’t tell anyone (especially me) and I eventually clued in and filled that leadership void without his public acknowledgement; both the leadership vacuum and my picking up the ball (with both Elenia’s and his private approval) created technical issues as well as drama. Months ago, I delegated management of the Halcyon project to Ricky, who has been instrumental in helping fill the vacuum left by Tranq there. He is also very professional and diplomatic in his approach, and is a wonderful contributor to the project. Behind me (appurist), he (kf6kjg) has been the second-most active contributor to Halcyon and related projects.

And while there are many very positive and wonderful people in the Islandz and wider virtual work community, it is also so disappointing to spend every waking moment volunteering all this work for others only to end up with so many who are unsatisfied and have the nerve to claim it isn’t enough. (Well, it’s true, it’s not enough. That’s why the work items needed to be triaged, prioritized and noted for later, and dealt with in order as time and resources permit.) But to those people I will just say that it has been far more than my fair share, and it has been far, far more than those who have been critical contributed (combined). I will judge my performance over the last six months, and last 8 years, as exceptional and look back with pride on what was accomplished.

For now, my mom’s health and needs come first, then Leanna and my family, then my full-time day job. Going forward I will continue to contribute to Islandz and Halcyon where I can, when I have time. This means advising Elenia, doing behind the scenes work (oar exports, maps, etc), enhancing the app (e. g. new user registration and region orders come to mind) and contributing advice and fixes to the Halcyon server team.

What I won’t be doing is actively participating in ongoing Islandz #General Discord discussions etc. I certainly won’t be doing anything with support issues such as region reports. (This includes private messages to me that bypass issue reporting, things like region performance, regions down, crossing issues, etc.) Elenia and Mai have been taking care of those for years, and they need to be aware of all reports, and I need to focus my limited time.

Islandz needs your support to survive. The servers are still expensive, and to even get through the month, Elenia has needed to cut a few corners. If Islandz can grow, fewer corners will need cutting, performance and features will improve. (You still need to report serious performance issues so she can check, such as sluggish walking and errors, but for percentage decreases in performance such as drops in the stats reported, know that it will get better when the number of regions grows to 80 or 100.) Amazon has server instance limits she is working on getting raised, it’s just not there yet. If you stick with it, it will get better. Unlike InWorldz on Rackspace, there’s a solid foundation now, still missing a few things, but ready to build upon.

Be kind to each other. Everyone is hurting and disappointed. Many have left and many others will leave, but this work has been applied in order to give those who stay something solid to build on.

Former InWorldz users… we’ve all been waiting for this; now it’s here.

Tomorrow (Wednesday, November 14) at 3pm Islandz time (6pm Eastern time), the Islandz grid will enable logins. There’s not much to see yet, but at least you’ll be able to log back in and upload things, etc.

There is a welcome region called Islandz Welcome Center (IWC) which is a work-in-progress, with ocean regions around it for sailing or flying, plus an Islandz Beta 1 region for testing, which has sandbox semantics: open build with a 4-hour auto-return.

There are no avatars yet, and no inventory for anyone, except some preliminary uploads over the last day or so by a couple of early beta testers. There is no currency yet, so no commercial sales, no region recovery yet (from saved InWorldz OAR files), and thus no real content yet. But there is a sandbox and multiple regions and upload capability and user accounts, so it’s a start.

How to recover your InWorldz account for use in Islandz

The first step is to indicate that you want to log in to Islandz, by going to the new “app” site at https://app.islandzvw.com/ and login with your former InWorldz credentials:

Islandz will recognize that you were a former user and offer to recover your account for you. You can optionally recover your account (user and profile). Unfortunately, all inventory was lost when the InWorldz servers on Rackspace were shut down, as well as any assets not rezzed in a region. However, objects rezzed in a region, or items in the top-level Contents of those objects, were saved in special region backup (OAR) files that also included the assets, and can be recovered on Islandz in the near future. (Eventually it will also be possible to obtained filtered OARs of your creations for export to other grids.)

Whether you choose to enable your account to be recovered or not, you can also also choose whether to opt-in for allowing any of your creations to be recovered from the region backup (OAR) files saved before InWorldz servers were shut down.

Note that currently there is no way to rerun the opt-in choices once your account has been created, although this is planned as soon as priorities allow, so please read the choices carefully and try to choose wisely according to your needs and desires. That said, it’s possible for Islandz Support to manually update it if you change your mind before that feature is available.

Note also that there is no support yet for new user registrations. (Any attempt to register will produce an error.) Only recovery of previous InWorldz user accounts is possible currently.

Once you run through the two choices in the InWorldz user/content recovery wizard and Confirm, you then have an Islandz account (if you left the account recovery box checked). At this point you can log in to the main website at https://islandzvw.com/ or from there open and log in to the Zendesk-based Islandz forums and support site. Currently there’s not much on either, but that is expected to change very soon, especially in the case of the forums!

On login and account migration, only the first two choices are enabled, but as you can see, there are plans for many features from this app. Note it will be available as this website, but also as a standalone desktop application for Windows, MacOS X and Linux.

Logging in to the Islandz grid

Logins are currently restricted to a small number of beta testers, but the gates will open at 3pm Islandz time (6pm Eastern time), tomorrow, Wednesday November 14.

To log in when the time comes, either download and install the new Islandz viewer from the main website‘s Downloads page, or use any OpenSim-compatible viewer such as Alchemy or Firestorm. If using the Islandz Viewer, the Islandz grid is already in the list and the default destination. If using a third-party viewer, Islandz grid can be added in the Preferences form under the ‘Grids’ tab (in Alchemy) or the ‘OpenSim’ tab (in Firestorm). If Islandz is not already in your list, you can enter this login URI to add it: http://login.islandzvw.com:8002/ and press Add.

Rough Edges

The welcome center, the websites, and the grid installation is still rough in a few places. It’s not really ready yet, but with the regions up and running, and user account migration in place, it didn’t seem right to make people wait even longer until it was more polished. Please bear with us while we tidy up, but welcome aboard! And see you tomorrow at 3pm Islandz time!

Some time ago — I think it was back in September — I mentioned in the InWorldz forum that I wouldn’t be commenting there anymore. We just didn’t have the staff to actually take care of things and also get into discussions, explaining the rationales for some of the technical actions and priorities that I put in place, or the business or other actions and decisions that Elenia has gone forward with. Sometimes we do, or can a little, but that a public forum with many participants is just not time-effective given such a small number of people getting things done. This post clarifies where you will find me, and Elenia, and how to get things done as InWorldz residents. We’ve said this many times, but then violated that (I’m certainly the main culprit there)… so lately I’ve been trying to stick to this with more discipline. Here’s the rundown:

• Suspected bugs and enhancement suggestions should go in the Mantis bug reporting system. It’s easy to remember where that is: bugs.inworldz.com. This includes both the grid (logins, regions) and the inworldz.com website.

• Bugs that are unique to the InWorldz viewer and enhancement suggestions should also go in the Mantis bug reporting system above. However, if the bug is shared between many different viewers, it may also be more appropriate or effective to file a report with the upstream viewer, i.e. Alchemy, or Second Life if it is in all viewers.

• Problems with regions, such as not being able to get to a region, not showing in the list on the website, performance problems within a region, etc. should start with a Support request. This will be seen much sooner, and by more InWorldz staff, than a Mantis bug report. If it turns out that it is a new technical issue for which Support doesn’t have a workaround solution, then it will be escalated for further investigation and/or will become a Mantis bug report.

• Requests for changes for regions or user accounts should also be submitted as a Support request.

• Payment problems or any financial issues should also be handled as a Support request.

• Business suggestion and other ideas for InWorldz (and just about anything) could be discussed among residents within the forum, because sometimes other residents will see the problems with suggestions and respond. This does save time for staff. However, if something is agreed upon by many residents as a good business idea (or even if not), that should then go directly to Elenia as an IM or notecard. Only Elenia can speak for InWorldz business.

• Everything else… When in doubt, submit a Support request and it’s probably the best place anyway, but if not, you will be directed to the most appropriate place.

• The InWorldz forum is almost entirely provided for the residents. It is mostly a peer-to-peer discussion area, and while we say this repeatedly, it is rarely understood: it is not a place for reporting problems,bugs, enhancement suggestions or business ideas to InWorldz. See the areas above for that. Both Elenia and I sometimes reads forum messages, but we both place our focus on the actual official channels: Mantis reports and Support requests, and getting the planned work items completed. Reading the forum, and especially responding in the forum, would be a major distraction when there are so few people actually doing the hands-on work. The forum does not support any form of tracking of unresolved issues, and each thread tends to go well off-topic and become highly unfocused. Then only hours later, it may be lost in the flood of other message threads. It is absolutely the worst method for communicating and tracking issues and bugs. It was not designed for that at all.

___________

Personally, I will be prioritizing and trying to address Mantis bug reports, and the technical needs of the grid. I have not been reading the forum for weeks now (or only a message or two when someone points it out to me) and absolutely will not be replying in the forum.

I want to be clear… this is not ignoring the residents; it is doing, not talking about doing things. It is focusing on the residents who are using the requested methods for properly reporting issues, bugs and suggestions. Again, it is focusing on getting stuff done rather than talking about getting stuff done. My desire to be as transparent as possible has become a lack of discipline and a problem managing time, and I’ve finally learned that lesson.

So please: use the proper channels for alerting InWorldz to issues, bugs and suggestions. It will be more effective. The forum tends to temporarily involve all the residents who just like to comment on everything, whether or not they have any direct or particular connection to the post, then the thread goes into hiding very quickly and is forgotten. It’s absolutely the worst way to try to get something accomplished.